City Transportation Issues Coordinating Council at #TRBAM2023 Council meeting 8am Tues in Liberty M (M4) City-relevant sessions throughout:

Standing room only for our City DOT Leadership Panel is standing room only to hear Seattle, SF, Nashville, and NYC talk about AVs in DC #TRBAM

Council meeting underway! Liberty Salon M (M4) in the Marriott and online. Hearing now from Jeff Davis of @EnoTrans on industry financial challenges from inflation and transit fiscal cliff #TRBAM

City Council-sponsored workshops happening now at #trbam2024! Not too late to join! Bike ped data fusion (1006) City and state electrification (1011) Open Innovation (1012)

Council agenda and Teams link https://t.co/qianq9XPeM

And that’s a wrap! Come join the committee meeting tomorrow if this is interesting to you

Christopher: don’t forget about the fundamental role of community design. Complete Streets has now become a federal policy after a huge bottom up push over 20 years. What we want is a 30 year effort to push forward.

Last question: what about city-to-city leadership? How would the panelists like to lead? Kim: would love to see free transportation that is robust and useful. But also need to recognize where we are and that change is often slow - PGH just elected it’s first black mayor ever.

Christopher: transit cannot be a siloed discussion - transit+land use+econ development. Saw it with the rapid repurposing of roadway for retail/restaurants helping save businesses. Transit cannot just be fixed route - think bigger for more success

Kim: really worried about the death spiral of transit systems that are losing revenue, making cuts in response, and then see lower revenue. Need to change the metrics (revenue shouldn’t matter). Allison adds that transit is an essential service. It enables NYC to exist!

Fare capping was a was to encourage/incentivize more trips. Looking at ways to move between subway/bus and commuter rail more easily.

Audience question: how has the market for non-commute travel changed? Allison: we are unique for being a 24/7/365 system and that service means people just use transit in their lives. Did previously have big commute peaks, but saw the discretionary travel come back faster

Allison: this is bottom up as well as a leadership challenge. Get a diverse team behind the projects. Not just race, ethnicity, gender - need different points of view!

Audience comment: hiring challenges - hire the community! The steps to get gov jobs can be too high (eg masters + civil service exam + drivers license + letter of rec). Kim notes PGH is building some of the community hiring into their RAISE grant they got

Christopher: this is not the stimulus and we can take a bit longer. A lot of communities have been doing this work, and USDOT wants to support that capacity so that the community can do this long past this authorization

Kim: USDOT has asked for the world-saving projects in the NOFO, but the cities can’t deliver that much. Also, equity means we should work at the speed of trust, but when grants are open you want to move and that can be too fast for where your trust is.

Christopher: BIL not the only source to look at. Inflation Reduction Act has climate-supportive funding for EPA that could be valuable (apologies - i mangled this one!)

Audience question: flexibility to look beyond the transportation space - eg linkages to health and housing (and their funding). Christopher: BIL has a lot built into it to support that. Updating the planning rule to do so. Look at formula as well as discretionary $ for changes

Making changes (esp risky ones) in transportation has the added challenges of it all being done in the public realm, so it’s going to be in the press.

When MTA went electronic tolling, they went all in within a year. Also re-orged the structure, from 9 to 4 then 3 operational groups (commands) and a plan for how to go back if it didn’t work - and they did end up going back to 4